Crowds / A Moving-Picture of Democracy

by Gerald Stanley Lee

We prefer still little women like Madame Curie, or a man like Sir Joseph Lister, or like Wilbur Wright—the courage that faces material facts, that deals with the elements of things, whether in a bottle, or in the heaven above us, or in the earth, or in a man, or in an enemy.

When the subject-matter is human nature and the courage we have to have is the courage that can deal with people, we ask ourselves: "What are the most difficult facts to face in people?"

They are:

The facts about how they are different from us. The facts about their being like us. The facts as to what we can do about it.

So it has come to seem to me to be the greatest, the most typical and difficult courage of modern life and of a crowd civilization, the courage to look at actual facts in people and to see how the people can be made to go together.

A man's courage is his sense of identity.

A man's courage toward nature, heat, cold, mountains, seas, deserts, chemistry, geology, is his sense of identity with God and of his right to share with God in the creating of His world.

His courage toward people is his sense of identity with men who seem different from him, of all races, all classes, and all nations. He sees the differences in their big relations alongside the resemblances. Then he fits the differences into the resemblances and knows what to do.

There is a statue of Sir George Livesey, one of the early presidents of the South Metropolitan Gas Company, placed at the entrance of the works where thousands of workmen day and night pass in and pass out.

Sir George Livesey was the man who, in the early days of the South Metropolitan Gas Company, stood out against all his workmen, for six long weeks, to get the workmen to believe that they were as good as he was. He believed that they were capable, or should be capable, of being identified with him and working with him as partners, of sharing in the direction of the business, of sharing in the profits, and coöperating all day, every day, with him and the other partners, to make the business a success.